According to the latest USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll Kerry’s bounce may have been negative as Bush now leads Kerry among likely voters by a margin of 50% to 47% among likely voters. Kerry leads Bush by the same margin with registered voters, but registered voter polls tends to be less accurate than polls of likely voters.
In fact, it seems as though it’s Bush voters who got the biggest bounce out of the Kerry speech. Look at Andrew Sullivan who started the week making googly eyes at Kerry and ended it noting that on the war he’s still impotent and indecisive. Kerry’s speech reinforced what many had thought of Kerry, that he’s a liberal flip-flopper relying on his service in Vietnam to shield him from years of poor decisions.
I can’t think of another convention where the nomineee got a negative bounce – even Al Gore’s terrible 2000 speech netted him a 12 point bounce. Part of it is naturally due to the divided nature of this election cycle, but part of it is due to Kerry’s essential problem – problems that will only be magnified in the months ahead. This election isn’t over, but now Bush has the opportunity to take the ball and run with it.
UPDATE: Actually, there is a precedent for getting a negative post-convention bounce in modern political history – in 1972 George McGovern actually lost ground after the Democratic convention – another anti-war Democrat against a hawkish Republican. I’m sure the Kerry campaign doesn’t like that comparison, but I’ve the feeling we’ll hear of it quite often this cycle…
Kerry’s speech was awful…he played to the Michael Moore Democrats…
Add to that the fact that he was his usual stiff self, only rushing his delivery like he was on speed, and the flop sweat, and you have the recipe for a loser’s acceptance speech…
I wonder if Kerry will try to take back his acceptance speech…”I was for the speech before I was against it…I really wanted to give a different speech” or blame someone else…”It’s my speechwriter’s fault”…or claim he was misled…”Bush misled me into making that speech”…maybe blame a secret service agent…”That SOB ran into me before I gave my speech”…
Maybe Kerry will make a statement similar to his one on abortion: “I really believe in everything the opposite of what I said, only I won’t act on that belief, because that would be wrong, and so I am against everything I really do…there, does that please everyone?”
If the Viet Cong’s “greatest generation” suddenly become globe trotting jihadists, I think we will be in good shape under a Kerry Administration.
A negative bounce is more of a “splat” don’t you think?
Brilliant article in the WaPo on the Kerry Doctrine, “I will bring back this nation’s time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation.”
The article rightly points out that Kerry totally misreads history, that “The United States has sent forces into combat dozens of times over the past century and a half, and only twice, in World War II and in Afghanistan, has it arguably done so because it “had to.”
But even more than point out the folly of Kerry’s read of history, it points out the folly of his concept.
“If Kerry has revealed himself in an unusual moment of honesty, it’s time everyone took an equally honest look at where he would lead the country if elected. Kerry’s “doctrine of necessity,” if seriously intended, would entail a pacifism and an isolationism more thorough than any attempted by a U.S. government since the 1930s. It would rule out all wars fought for humanitarian ends, all interventions to prevent genocide, to defend democracy or even, as in the case of the Persian Gulf War, to uphold international law against aggression. For those are all wars of choice.
For someone who professes to seek better relations with the rest of the world, Kerry’s doctrine of necessity would base American foreign policy on narrow, selfish interests far more than the alleged “unilateralism” of the Bush administration. Some Europeans have been quietly worrying that what they consider Bush’s overambitious foreign policy will be followed in the United States by an isolationist backlash. After hearing Kerry’s speech, they may worry a bit more.”
Is there any doubt that a Kerry presidency would be an utter disaster?
Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, every other poll taken since the convention ranging from Rasmussen to Newsweek shows Kerry with a lead. I wasn’t expecting much of a bounce from the convention give the polarization of the electorate, but we should have enough data to know by the middle of the week what degree of poll bounce, or lack thereof, Kerry got from the convention.
Another Thought, Kerry’s speech “played to the Michael Moore Democrats”? The guy spent two-thirds of the speech saying he was gonna be a better Republican than George Bush. Your immature analysis suggests one of two things. Either you never even listened to the speech and merely convinced yourself it pandered to the Michael Moore crowd out of ignorance…..or you lack the intellectual competence to judge the difference between liberalism and conservatism in the adult world of American politics. Judging from the infantile blather you relentlessly post on here, I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter.
Mark: Of course, you leave out that even the Newsweek poll (which I already mentioned) shows Kerry getting an insubstantial bounce from the convention at best. A 4-point bounce is less than *I’d* predicted, which shows just how bad Kerry is doing.
Furthermore, if you don’t can the personal attacks, you’ll be banned again. Treat the other commenters with respect or go elsewhere.
Hey, Mark, perhaps you weren’t listening to this Michael Moore/Wesley Clark delusional stuff:
I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a Vice President who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States.
And Kerry has the nerve to say he is running a positive campaign? None of the things he says happened under Bush, although Gore did meet with Enron to discuss the Kyoto accords. Bush did not mislead us into war: Edwards says he wasn’t misled. Was Kerry stupid enough to be misled? I don’t think so, he had been calling for an attack to do away with Saddam’s WMDs for years. So, was he lying then or now…or does he just lie? There is, by the way, no West Wing in the hospital in which Kerry was born, so I guess we have our answer.
Vox Populi, there was nothing shrill about any of those statements from Kerry. He merely pointed out differences of direction between himself and the incumbent in what can only be described as generous tones. The best case that can be made about Kerry being soft on terrorism is that he’s unwilling to stand up and voice the fervent opposition necessary to denounce the repugnant incumbent administration and its litany of sins and war crimes.
Perhaps the Kerry Doctrine of “Once we get clobbered, I’ll try and figure out how to strike back” is not so reassuring to people…
Is it possible that the lack of bounce is less likely due to inept Kerry speeches but more because people are stuck to their belief that they hate Bush or think Kerry is a bimbo? I just get the feeling that there are not many people out there sitting on the fence. The people that have made up their minds already seem very determined and unwilling to support the opposite candidate. If there is a large swing of populace one way or the other I don’t think that it will happen because either Kerry or Bush convinced people to switch. I think that it would only happen if a candidate screwed up, I mean royally screwed up. It would take something on the magnitude of calling an African American a n-word or claiming that radical Islamic extremists and terrorists are super duper people.